One thing I never really considered until recently was who I expected to read what I’ve written. It didn’t cross my mind even when I was doing the Problogger Challenge last year. I always wrote stories and articles I thought I would like to read. That’s not a horrible way to write, but it makes marketing a bit more difficult. After all, you wrote it so of course you’d like it. The problem with that is that you are one person. Not everyone is like you. This is why it’s important to create reader profiles.

I found the simplest way to do this in the article “Make Writing Fun: Methods Monitoring Student Writing,” which is written for high school teachers, but I think it’s a great way for anyone to start profiling potential readers. Think of someone you enjoy telling stories to. Write down specifics about this person from reasons you enjoy telling your stories to them to reasons they enjoy listening to or reading them. This gives you a very personal idea of who your potential audience is.

From there you can begin to imagine others who might enjoy your works. I highly recommend Kristen Lamb’s We Are Not Alone to help develop a rounded out profile of your general readership. If you’d like to get just a little more creative by doing several individualized profiles you could try Darren Rowse’s style of telling a little story about each imagined reader and including a picture.

Some basic information to consider including in your reader profiles, however you choose to put them together, include: